SandyJoy wrote:It just seems so simple to me, as it does to a few others here; you cannot have matter 'create' the Awareness of 'matter"--- You must have Awareness first in order to be aware of 'a brain' or 'things'. This is almost silly, but it seems some cannot grasp this notion at all.

If you will notice, Awareness is not subject to time and matter is. If you will notice, Awareness is not some "thing" we can own or control or get our hands on "matter" we can hold and mold, This means Awareness reigns supreme and free from 'slavery' , or harm, or damage---

Seeing this with you Sandy, seems so strange that most scientists want to 'explain' awareness as a 'by-product' of matter complexity ... when matter becomes complex enough, then it becomes what they call 'life' ... and awareness appears with life ...

It seems almost stupid to think like that, but it is the dominant idea in scientific circles ...

The reason behind this belief comes from the erroneous identification with the body, as materialist scientists think they ARE their body, they imagine that awareness is 'contained' somewhere in the body (somewhere in the brain probably) ... they don't realize that awareness is quite independant from matter, as you said it well ...

"What irritates us about others is an opportunity to learn on ourselves"
(Carl Jung)

ashley72 wrote:The main take away message from Minsky is that people mistakenly "umbrella" consciousness into one "single" or primary essence when it is clearly a multitude of different complex processes going on within the brain.

Consciousness does exist... But to understand it, you have to examine the multitude of different processes it constituent separately.

This is an interesting interpretation, but merely only the author's definition of Consciousness which only constitutes a bunch of mental activities as listed below from 'Joan'. Understanding these mental activities which you copied and pasted in the link below, in no way gives any indication as to where subjective experience actually stems from in the actual brain. I understand what it is attempting to do. Essentially, it is twisting the term 'consciousness' as to merely point to these 'numerous mental activities/states' in order to claim that there IS no real definition of Consciousness (as we usually think) since there is too much that it encompasses and instead, there is only mere 'models/systems' which explains our mental experiences/states/activities. Again, it's one interpretation and I have no problem with that. However, there is no scientific evidence to support this other than claiming 'we hope that it will work in simulated robots'. And even then, we still wouldn't know if robots are even 'conscious' in the context that humans are.

One of the problems with new-age teachings like PON, is it propagates the myth that Consciousness is a solidarity essence which is primary to thought or cognition.

It's only a myth to you, because you are taking a biased stance in belief in the hypothesis you have presented above. But, while your hypothesis above is interesting, it holds just as much scientific evidence as the myth you are condemning here.

Enlightened2B wrote:
Ultimately, there's no 'scientific' evidence for EITHER position that consciousness is a product of or beyond the brain, but the more and more that material science fails to come up with hard, evidence of a source of material consciousness, without denying the interpretation of 'subjective experience' as 'non-existent' just to fit their model, then the less likely it will appear that consciousness can be thought of as an emerging product of matter.

If anyone is interested, here's a different perspective...check out this link:

Thanks for this interesting interview of David Chalmers ... I liked very much the idea of zombies ... and of course many people are so 'conditioned' by their beliefs, education, traditions, culture etc. that they really behave like 'zombies' ... without consciousness ...

David Chalmers refutes the idea that the 'hard problem of consciousness' can be solved by neuro-sciences, in other words that consciousness emerges from matter. But he also says something even more interesting: I cannot doubt of my own consciousness, because I can have a direct experience of it, so it needs no proof, no demonstration, it is an undeniable self-evident fact ... but I can say nothing about 'your' consciousness, because I can never 'experience' it ... maybe you are a robot or a 'zombie' ... or even a 'dream' I make ...

What Chalmers does not say is that it is obvious that there is ONE awareness (which is said 'mine'), but it can (will) never be proved there is another one or even many others ... the fundamental mistake we make is to identify with the body, which is only a fragment of the totality, and because of this erroneous identification, thought creates the idea that awareness is 'contained' in this body ... which is an absurdity ...

"What irritates us about others is an opportunity to learn on ourselves"
(Carl Jung)

ashley72 wrote:
There is no evidence to suggest that many aspects of consciousness won't be simulated one day in machines.

What will be simulated by machines is not consciousness ... machines can only simulate human physical behaviour ... and it is also true that many humans just behave like machines, without consciousness ... this is called 'conditioning' ...

"What irritates us about others is an opportunity to learn on ourselves"
(Carl Jung)

ashley72 wrote:
One of the problems with new-age teachings like PON, is it propagates the myth that Consciousness is a solidarity essence which is primary to thought or cognition.

Now you reveal your real agenda here Ashley ... you come here to criticize or debunk Eckhart Tolle's teachings, and my question would be: what is your personal interest in doing this ? What is your expectation in this forum, except maybe getting some kind of fun or entertainment at the expense of others who would not clearly see the game you play ?

??

So to reformulate my question more directly: are you trolling this forum ?

??

"What irritates us about others is an opportunity to learn on ourselves"
(Carl Jung)

Enlightened2B wrote:
Ultimately, there's no 'scientific' evidence for EITHER position that consciousness is a product of or beyond the brain, but the more and more that material science fails to come up with hard, evidence of a source of material consciousness, without denying the interpretation of 'subjective experience' as 'non-existent' just to fit their model, then the less likely it will appear that consciousness can be thought of as an emerging product of matter.

If anyone is interested, here's a different perspective...check out this link:

In the beginning of this interview of David Chalmers ... the journalists says that many philosophers and scientists even question the existence of consciousness itself, isn't consciousness an illusion ?

Of course, David Chalmers answers that I cannot doubt the existence of my own consciousness, but I can doubt everything else, including the existence of another consciousness than mine.

But to go further in this I would say that as consciousness is NOT 'manifested' (non material), you can never find it, because it is 'nothing', NO thing, so a materialist mind will never find physical evidence of consciousness ...

To give an image it can be said that consciousness is very much like space: space is emptiness, nothingness, it can be found nowhere but is everywhere .. and space contains all the universe ... and without space there could be no universe ... but no one would deny the 'existence' of space ...

And there is only ONE space ...

"What irritates us about others is an opportunity to learn on ourselves"
(Carl Jung)

ashley72 wrote:
One of the problems with new-age teachings like PON, is it propagates the myth that Consciousness is a solidarity essence which is primary to thought or cognition.

Now you reveal your real agenda here Ashley ... you come here to criticize or debunk Eckhart Tolle's teachings, and my question would be: what is your personal interest in doing this ? What is your expectation in this forum, except maybe getting some kind of fun or entertainment at the expense of others who would not clearly see the game you play ?

??

So to reformulate my question more directly: are you trolling this forum ?

??

There is a big distinction between posting controversial perspectives, and deliberately inciting emotional reactions in others. I'm certainly the former. What you need to remember is new-age spirituality covers a lot of controversial topics... particular because it goes to the heart of many central questions of existence and meaning.

Phil2 wrote: I liked very much the idea of zombies ... and of course many people are so 'conditioned' by their beliefs, education, traditions, culture etc. that they really behave like 'zombies' ... without consciousness ...

You should also reflect on your own thoughts and judgments about others... you asserted that "beliefs, education, traditions & culture" can lead to conditioned people that behave like zombies?

Surely you realize that a statement like that might invoke controversy, disagreement & debate.. particular from someone who may categories themselves as having culture, traditions, education & beliefs? Which pretty much includes nearly everyone!

What is your personal interest in making statements like this? What benefit does statements like this make to others?

I'm comfortable with the opinions, I'm contributing to these discussion, I don't believe that Consciousness is a primary essence. I think it is a multitude of separate complex processes which are experienced by humans as a single essence, but that experience is nothing more than an illusion to the observer.

Do you think Eckhart Tolle is any different from my above example of "Joan"?

We could easily of change the name "Joan" to "Eckhart Tolle"

Eckhart Tolle is part way across the street on the way to his next spiritual retreat being held in downtown Vancouver . While thinking about what to say at the event, he hears a sound and turns his head —and sees a quickly oncoming car. Uncertain whether to cross or retreat, but uneasy about arriving late, he decides to sprint across the road. He later remembers his injured knee and reflects upon his impulsive decision. “If my knee had failed, I could have been killed. Then what would have all the attendees attending my spiritual retreat have thought of me?” Being a fully self-realized & enlightened new-age teacher, these worrisome thoughts washed over him. " "

It might seem natural to ask, "How conscious was Eckhart Tolle of what he did?" But rather than dwell on that ‘consciousness’ word, let’s look at a few of the things that Eckhart Tolle “did.”

Reaction: Eckhart reacted quickly to that sound.
Identification: He recognized it as being a sound.
Characterization: He classified it as the sound of a car.
Attention: He noticed certain things rather than others.
Imagining: He envisioned two or more possible futures.
Indecision: He wondered whether to cross or retreat.
Decision: He chose one of several alternative actions.
Recollection: He retrieved descriptions of prior events.
Reconsideration: Later he reconsidered this choice.
Selection: He selected a way to choose among options.
Apprehension: He was uneasy about arriving late.
Planning: He constructed a multi-step action-plan.
Embodiment: He tried to describe her body's condition.
Emotion: He changed major parts of her mental state.
Representation: He interconnected a set of descriptions.
Language: He constructed several verbal expressions.
Narration: He heard them as dialogs in his mind.
Anticipation: He expected certain future condition.
Intention: He changed some of his goals’ priorities.
Reasoning: He made various kinds of inferences.
Reflection: He thought about what he’s recently done.
Self-Reflection: He reflected on his recent thoughts.
Empathy: He imagined other persons’ thoughts.
Moral Reflection: He evaluated what she has done.
Self-Imaging: He made and used models of herself.
Self-Awareness: He characterized her mental condition.
Sense of Identity: He regarded herself as an entity.
Self-Realisation: He realizes that he's more than the sum of his thoughts

Now one of Tolle's important pointers is the following.

If you look at all the processes that go on whilst Eckhart Tolle is crossing the road, you can quickly see that there is a lot more processes happening than just conscious thinking.

So I would totally agree with ET, the umbrella term Consciousness is much richer and vaster than thought alone. I would also agree with his second point, that we are more than just our thinking. My only contention with ET's view, and it is a significant one.... Consciousness is not a solidarity primary essence... but rather many complex processes, some conscious, many unconscious that are produced by biological brain and nervous system processes. For this reason many of the processes could be simulated artificially in machines as new technology advances happen in the field of AI. All the object classification processes for body movements and object recognition are all happening sub-consciously... these processes occur in arrays of neural networks that learn to predict the target value from input patterns. ET is doing this kind of object classification all the time, its sub-conscious to him... and for good reason. It wouldn't help him navigate the world if he was aware of all the processes going on at the neural network level, in fact if he was... it will make it impossible for him to navigate the macroscopic world of people and cars.

Last edited by ashley72 on Wed Apr 30, 2014 11:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

Phil2 wrote: I liked very much the idea of zombies ... and of course many people are so 'conditioned' by their beliefs, education, traditions, culture etc. that they really behave like 'zombies' ... without consciousness ...

You should also reflect on your own thoughts and judgments about others... you asserted that "beliefs, education, traditions & culture" can lead to conditioned people that behave like zombies?

Surely you realize that a statement like that might invoke controversy, disagreement & debate.. particular from someone who may categories themselves as having culture, traditions, education & beliefs? Which pretty much includes nearly everyone!

What is your personal interest in making statements like this? What benefit does statements like this make to others?

I would say the same interest as seeing that the mirage in the desert is NOT an oasis but merely an illusion ... when such illusion is seen, then it becomes useless to run for water any more ...

So the seeing of the illusion is the ending of the illusion ...

"What irritates us about others is an opportunity to learn on ourselves"
(Carl Jung)

ashley72 wrote:
So I would totally agree with ET, the umbrella term Consciousness is much richer and vaster than thought alone. I would also agree with his second point, that we are more than just our thinking.

Good to hear this ... consciousness is like space, it englobes all physical and psychological forms but is itself unmanifested and formless ... nowhere and everywhere ... while its nature is essentially emptiness, nothingness ...

"What irritates us about others is an opportunity to learn on ourselves"
(Carl Jung)

ashley72 wrote:
So I would totally agree with ET, the umbrella term Consciousness is much richer and vaster than thought alone. I would also agree with his second point, that we are more than just our thinking.

Good to hear this ... consciousness is like space, it englobes all physical and psychological forms but is itself unmanifested and formless ... nowhere and everywhere ... while its nature is essentially emptiness, nothingness ...

Yes, at the subjective, first-person level.....Consciousness is experienced like space, as formless, nowhere and everywhere...I don't dispute that experience... but that is a macroscopic illusion.

If you take the time to delve into machine learning and artificial intelligence... you soon realize all the unconscious micro-processes happening that make the conscious macro-processes so effortless.

What you may not realize is that Consciousness and experience are interchangeable. Qualia - first person experience is just that subjective experience... what it feels like to experience the colour "red" in the subjective first-person experience. This is analogous to what it feels like to play a first-person shooter video game, which is very different to the objective coding that goes on to make that first-person experience so effortless. Someone who only ever experiences the playing of the game... and doesn't know what goes on to program such a game... they are basically unconscious to the objective reality of the underlying processes going on whilst playing the game (for good reason). Equally so the guy objectively programming the code, can't describe the experience of the fully fledged game by scrutinizing his own programming code. This is because the experience of the full-fledged game is an emergent property of complexity (layer upon layer).

This is the same with the colour "red"... at the atomic wavelength of light... there is nothing at that spectrum level to tell you about what the experience of "red" would feel like after its been through the human eye and filtered by a multitude of levels... before it reaches conscious experience at the user end.

ashley72 wrote:This is analogous to what it feels like to play a first-person shooter video game, which is very different to the objective coding that goes on to make that first-person experience so effortless. Someone who only ever experiences the playing of the game... and doesn't know what goes on to program such a game... they are basically unconscious to the objective reality of the underlying processes going on whilst playing the game (for good reason). Equally so the guy objectively programming the code, can't describe the experience of the fully fledged game by scrutinizing his own programming code. This is because the experience of the full-fledged game is an emergent property of complexity (layer upon layer).

The programmer developing the first person shooter had better leave the code behind from time to time and look and what the player experience is going to be or the game is likely to be a flop. But the player can fully enjoy the experience of the game without knowing the skunkworks that make it possible.

It isn't and either/or proposition.
The product and the production process are related and rely on each other to make the "experience".
What you are calling "objective reality" is no more than "the experience" at a different level.
The coding of the game is predicated on even more nested "objective realities" that support it.

IMO it is possible to go too far in either direction.
You can, at one end of the spectrum, start to suffer from "paralysis of analysis" and, on the other, become so detached from the substrata of an emergent condition that you lose all ability to understand it's origin, evolution, and ultimate demise because you have no sense of the context in which and by which it exists.

You can stand on the shore contemplating the layout of the lake, it's currents and undertows, the chemical composition of it's water and know all kinds of things about it but never dive in and swim.
You can also jump in without regard for any of what might be pertinent and need to know facts and drown.

Or you can know about it and be advised by that knowledge to safely put it on the shelf and have the experience when the time comes to let go of "about it" and "do it".

Wisdom is discerning the time and place for both and how they are interdependent on an even higher level of emergence.

coriolis wrote:IMO it is possible to go too far in either direction.
You can, at one end of the spectrum, start to suffer from "paralysis of analysis" and, on the other, become so detached from the substrata of an emergent condition that you lose all ability to understand it's origin, evolution, and ultimate demise because you have no sense of the context in which and by which it exists.

I couldn't agree more. The same can be said for knowing when to make rational decisions & when to make emotional decisions. If you're deciding what shares to invest in, the decision needs to be rational, if it's what restaurant you feel like eating at, the decision will be based on emotions.

ashley72 wrote:
I couldn't agree more. The same can be said for knowing when to make rational decisions & when to make emotional decisions. If you're deciding what shares to invest in, the decision needs to be rational, if it's what restaurant you feel like eating at, the decision will be based on emotions.

Don't know if investing is a very good example of a rational activity.
There have been cases where chimps and coin tosses outperformed the presumably "rational experts" at it.

Ashley, you bring up some good points about the 'computer game' reference. I understand you are using it as an analogy of sorts here. Yet, that's exactly how I see it as well. However, I'm insinuating to go a step further into some of the research that physicists like Tom Campbell and others are doing to the point where the 'computer game' is not the ultimate source of life, but merely the 'software' of sorts.

Here's your quote:

Ashley said: Equally so the guy objectively programming the code, can't describe the experience of the fully fledged game by scrutinizing his own programming code. This is because the experience of the full-fledged game is an emergent property of complexity (layer upon layer)

And I'm saying that to suggest that it is merely an 'emergent' property of complexity and nothing else is just one interpretation that is possibly missing a great chunk of the story. it's almost impossible to suggest that matter (which is exactly what we are talking about here with neural networks and such) can bring to life by itself the 'experience' of this fully fledged game without an actual 'programmer'. After all, if we build robots, they are not functioning as conscious robots by themselves (random evolution). We as humans are the ones programming them.

i think you make some really great points, but I think this is only half of the picture. If the universe itself is one giant computer program of sorts (which many physicists suggest), who's to say that our neural networks and brains as a whole are not just smaller computer programs. To me personally, it leaves way too much unanswered to the question of 'life' and as mere speculation.

Quantum computers are tapping into the wave structure of matter, because the mechanics is a wave structure it's not deterministic because there is a variable or fluctuating starting point. Quantum mechanics is not based on states it's a probability distribution. Classical computers have either a binary 0 or 1 starting point in a register so its deterministic we know where the state starts so we know each computation after that so it's deterministic. Classical computers only computing the very large deterministic states. Quantum computers compute the very small non deterministic non-states - and give probabilistic predictions not deterministic predictions. What emerges from the quantum world is deterministic predictions of objective reality.

The human brain most likely utilises both quantum & classical parts of nature to compute. With the introduction of the quantum computer so will artificial intelligence. The Quantum level is the atomic or very small level, classical is the macro level. They are different levels or layers of complexity.... emergence is an inherent trait of reality.

Machine learning algorithms simulate the biological algorithms our brain is using to learn by trial and error in predicting outcomes from pattern inputs from the environment. It's highly probable that artificial machine will one day have all the same creative thinking processes that biological systems have.

Quantum computing will allow humans to tackle much harder predictive modelling scenarios than classical computers do because they tap deeper down into the probabilistic nature or indeterministic nature of reality.

Last edited by ashley72 on Thu May 01, 2014 12:41 am, edited 1 time in total.